'founded on fact,' as they are called, with which some of these female connoisseurs have thought fit to present the world, abound everywhere in violations of historical truth as gross, and in sins against costume as glaring, as ever astounded the reader of a romance of the thirteenth century. As in these productions of that dark age, Achilles and Hector are always painted like true knights of Languedoc or Armorica, with saltires and fesses on their shields, with mottos, merrymen, pennons, gonfalons, caps of maintenance, close viziers, tabarts, trumpeters, and all the trappings of Gothic chivalry,—so, in the "Scottish Chiefs," we find Sir William Wallace, "that stalwart knycht of Elderslee," metamorphosed into an interesting young colonel, making love to a delicate lady, with one arm in a sling, and a cambric handkerchief in his hand—quoting Ossian, warbling ballads, and recovered from a sentimental swoon by the application of a crystal smelling-bottle. It would have been cruel indeed to have brought so fine a gentleman to the block on Tower-hill; so Miss Porter contrives to smuggle Sir William out of the way on the fatal morning, and introduces a dead porter to have his head chopped off in his stead.
These observations were suggested to me, by hearing some persons, in a company where I was the other day, call in question the accuracy of the author of the 'Tales of my Landlord,' in respect to an antiquarian remark which he has introduced in two different parts of his work. The first occurs in the description of the feast, in p. 251 of the 'Black Dwarf.'—"Beneath the Salt-cellar," says he, (a massive piece of plate which occupied the middle of the table,) "sate the sine nomine turba, men whose vanity was gratified by occupying even the subordinate space at the social board, while the distinction observed in ranking them was a salvo to the pride of their superiors." In the same manner, in the tale of 'Old Mortality,' in the admirable picture of the Laird of Miln wood's dinner, the old butler, Cuddie, &c. sat "at a considerable distance from the Laird, and, of course, below the salt." The critics, whose remarks it was my fortune to hear, were of opinion, that this usage of placing guests above or below the salt, according to the degree of nobility in their blood, was a mere invention ot the facetious author, and entirely without any foundation in history, or, as one of them expressed it, totum merum sal. It struck me at the time, that the usage was not so new to my ears as it seemed to be to theirs, and, on coming home, I looked into a volume of old English ballads, where I found the following verse:
"Thou art a carle mean of degre,
Ye salte yt doth stande twain me and thee;
But an thou hadst been of ane gentyl stray ne,
I wold have bitten my gante[1] againe."
An instance of the importance attached to the circumstance of being seated above the salt, occurs in a much later work—"The Memorie of the Somervilles," a curious book, edited last year by Mr Walter Scott.—"It was," says Lord Somerville, (who wrote about the year 1680) "as much out of peike as to give obedience to this act of the assemblies, that Walter Stewart of Allontoune, and Sir James his brother, both heretors in the parish of Cambusnethen, the first, from some antiquity, a fewar of the Earle of Tweddill's in Auchtermuire, whose predecessors, until this man, never came to sit above the salt-foot, when at the Laird of Cambusnethen's (Somerville's) table; which for ordinary every Sabboth they dyned at, as did most of the honest men of the parish of any account." Vol. ii. p. 394.
The same author is indeed so familiar with this usage as one of every-day observance, that he takes notice of it again in speaking of a provost of Edinburgh:—"He was a gentleman of very mean family upon Clyde, being brother german to the Goodman of Allentone, whose predecessors never came to sit above the salt-foot." P. 380, ibid.
I have observed, in several houses of distinction, certain very large and massy pieces of plate of a globular form, and commonly with two handles, which, although they go by a different name, I have at times suspected to be no other than "salt-foots," or, as it should be written, salt-vats. To whatever uses these may be applied, I have always been inclined to say with Plautus—
"Nunquam ego te turn esse Matulam credida."
I shall endeavour to procure a draw-
- ↑ i. e. glove.
